Date: w. 1736, 1749

"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1751

"But could our Eyes behold the deep Recess, / Where soft Pamela's Thoughts in private rest, / You'd find, in spite of Hymen's sacred Vows, / Ten Hours in Twelve that she abhors her Spouse"

— Leapor, Mary (1722-1746)

Date: 1766

"Now Brag the beaut'ous sex controuls, / And is the window to their souls."

— Jemmat [née Yeo], Catherine (bap. 1714, d. 1766?)

Date: 1773

"My heart in Delia is so fully blest, / It has no room to lodge another joy."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1777

"My pineal gland could you but view, / You'd scarce believe your eyes see true: / There's such a jumble; good and bad, / All sorts of thoughts, may there be had; / Like broker's shop, where we may find / Goods that belong to half mankind."

— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)

Date: 1777

"Thus oft, from shop of brain, I try / To throw the dirt and rubbish by; / But still they gain their former state, / Or leave a vacuum in the pate."

— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)

Date: 1780

A friend's "influence hovers o'er the panting heart ... Till the pain'd, prison'd mind shall rise, / And drop her feeble mansion in the dust, / To claim thy promis'd bliss beyond the skies"

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1780

"Through the night's still air / The sound of human voices, and the clank / Of iron hoofs, reveal'd a scene at once, / That almost shook his soul from her frail tenement."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1780

Reason's subjects work and return home with "treasures fraught" and display before their queen their "shining spoils, which are laid up in "mental stores."

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1784

"The hidden lead indents the murderer's brain; / With one demoniac glance, as down he fell, / The soul starts furious from its vital cell."

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)